Plitidepsin Case Study

Introduction An anti-tumour agent known as, Plitidepsin, is an anti-tumour agent of marine origin developed by PharmaMar, which is a biopharmaceutical company located in Madrid, Spain. PharmaMar mainly focusses on oncology and research from sea to discover molecules with anti-tumour activity. (About PharmaMar | Pharmamar) Aplidin or Dehydrodidemnim B were also known to be another name for Plitidepsin. (plitidepsin | C57H87N7O15 – PubChem 2016) Plitidepsin was extracted from ascidian Aplidium albicans, a species of sea squirt from Balearic Islands. (Aplidium albicans | EurekAlert!) Plitidepsin is compound from class of antineoplastics and depsipeptides has a molecular formula of C57H87N7O15 and a molecular weight of 1110.34g/mol. The IUPAC name of Plitidepsin is
More importantly, plitidepsin lacks clinically relevant toxicity of bone marrow; so, plitidepsin is the ideal candidate to treat multiple myeloma patients with poor bone marrow reserve who were heavily pre-treated (Mateos et al., 2010). Multiple myeloma can be heavily pre-treated with chemotherapy, steroids, biological therapy, intensive treatment or even stem cell transplant (Cancer Research UK, 2015, para. 2). However, if the myeloma returns after these treatments given, doctors would advise various combinations of drugs which will cause the myeloma to be even more difficult to treat (Cancer Research UK, 2015, para. 3). Plitidepsin, like the other types of chemotherapy, has the ability to damage cells as they divide; therefore, plitidepsin can kill these harmful myeloma cells (Cancer Research UK, 2015,